Interest Group Politics in the Southern States

INTEREST GROUP POLITICS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES

INTEREST GROUP POLITICS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES

Edited by

Ronald J. Hrebenar

and

Clive S. Thomas

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa and London

Copyright © 1992 by

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487–0380

All Rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Paula C. Dennis

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Interest group politics in the southern states / edited by Ronald J. Hrebenar and Clive S. Thomas.

       p.      cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.    ) and index.

ISBN 0-8173-0568-8 (alk. paper)

1. Pressure groups—Southern States.    2. Southern States—Politics and government—1951–        I. Hrebenar, Ronald J., 1945–    .   II. Thomas, Clive S.

JK1118.1567    1992                    91-40803

322.4′3′0975—dc20                       CIP

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-8904-8 (electronic)

This book is dedicated to

Harmon Zeigler,

a southerner and a pioneer in the study of state

interest groups

CONTENTS

Preface

1. Understanding Interest Group Activity in Southern State Politics

Clive S. Thomas

Part I: The Peripheral South

2. Kentucky: Adapting to the Independent Legislature

Malcolm E. Jewell and Penny M. Miller

3. Tennessee: New Challenges for the Farm, Liquor, and Big Business Lobbies

David H. Folz and Patricia K. Freeman

4. Virginia: A New Look for the Political Museum Piece

John T. Whelan

5. North Carolina: Interest Groups in a State in Transition

Jack D. Fleer

6. Florida: The Changing Patterns of Power

Anne E. Kelley and Ella L. Taylor

7. Texas: The Transformation from Personal to Informational Lobbying

Keith E. Hamm and Charles W. Wiggins

8. Arkansas: The Politics of Inequality

Arthur English and John J. Carroll

Part II: The Deep South

9. South Carolina: The Rise of the New South

Robert E. Botsch

10. Georgia: Business as Usual

Eleanor C. Main, Lee Epstein, and Debra L. Elovich

11. Alabama: Personalities and Factionalism

David L. Martin

12. Mississippi: An Expanding Array of Interests

Thomas H. Handy

13. Louisiana: The Final Throes of Freewheeling Ways?

Charles J. Barrilleaux and Charles D. Hadley

Part III: Conclusion

14. Change, Transition, and Growth in Southern Interest Group Politics

Ronald J. Hrebenar

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

PREFACE

In 1949, in his preface to Southern Politics in State and Nation, V. O. Key, Jr., expressed surprise that despite a vast literature on the South there was no comprehensive treatment of its politics. Radical changes in southern life and politics, as well as Key’s pioneering efforts, have spurred publication of several comprehensive studies over the ensuing forty years. There have also been a plethora of articles, book chapters, and monographs that have analyzed various aspects of southern politics from a comparative perspective. In terms of sheer volume, when all this is added to the writing on individual southern states, the scholarly literature on southern politics far outstrips that of any other region of the United States. Yet this body of literature includes no study, comprehensive or otherwise, of the role of interest groups in southern politics.

We believe that such a study is important for two reasons. First, because parties have been traditionally weak, leadership unstable, factionalism rife, and southern political systems often in a state of flux, the enduring nature of various entrenched interest groups has often provided political stability by filling several political voids. That is, because of the weakness and fragmentation of southern political institutions, interest groups have often performed political functions that in many other states were the province of parties, leaders, and public officials. These functions included recruiting candidates, financing campaigns, and determining and implementing public policies. Second, as a result of interest groups’ stabilizing and quasi-political institutional role, plus the nature of state constitutions that made them easy to amend, interest groups have exerted enormous influence on the public policy-making process of all southern states. In fact, in most cases they have been the dominant political forces. Together, these two factors meant that in most southern states interest groups were more important to the functioning of the political and governmental system and more powerful than in all but a few other states in the nation.

This is not to say that the literature on southern politics ignores interest groups and their importance. It would be well-nigh impossible to do that. There are many treatments of group systems in the literature on individual states, and to varying degrees groups are treated in comparative studies of aspects of southern politics as well as in the more comprehensive books on the politics of the South. Yet in virtually all these studies interest groups are treated only incidentally. Patterns of factionalism within the Democratic party, the rise of the Republicans, increased political participation by blacks, the effects of economic growth and changing demographics, and the South’s role in national politics tend, not without good reason, to be the dominant themes and foci of treatments of southern politics.

By focusing on interest groups, we provide a different perspective on the politics of the South and its individual states, although augmenting the general understanding of southern politics was not our major purpose when we first considered a book on interest groups in the South. This book was conceived as the third in a series of four books on interest groups in all fifty states, each focusing on a region of the country. The first covered the thirteen western states; the second, the Midwest; this one, the South; and the fourth, the northeastern states. A fifth volume will compare all fifty states. Seventy-eight political scientists were involved in the research, which took over five years to complete and has resulted in the most extensive treatment of interest groups in the states yet produced. As with the other three regional books, this one on the South grew out of a sense of frustration. We, and several colleagues throughout the country who teach and research in the area of interest groups, were particularly concerned about the dearth of material, and especially hard data, on groups at the state level.

In planning this fifty-state study we identified five primary objectives. One major objective was to provide the first overall analysis of interest groups in states where there was no existing research on the subject. About twenty states fell into this category. Second, we wanted to provide an update on group activity in states where there was some previous work. Together, these first two purposes would provide an up-to-date data base for the comparative analysis of state interest groups to an extent that had never before been possible—our third major objective. Our fourth was to be able to assess our findings against previous research on state groups by scholars such as Harmon Zeigler, Sarah McCally Morehouse, Wayne Francis, and Belle Zeller. From such an assessment we could suggest modifications to existing theories and develop some new theories and propositions of our own.

As interest groups are so central a part of all political and governmental systems, we realized that, if our methodology and analysis were rigorous enough, our study would also throw light on state and regional politics in general. This was our fifth objective. As our research progressed we found that studying interest groups provided a perspective on the politics of southern states and of the region that had not been previously explored or, at least, expressly treated. Nevertheless, this remains a book on state interest groups that focuses on the South, and not a treatment of southern politics that focuses on interest groups. First and foremost we are interest group specialists and, despite immersing ourselves in the relevant literature for the past four years, we do not claim to be experts on southern politics. We leave to such experts the task of discovering the deeper implications of our study for understanding politics in the region.

In the first chapter we use a conceptual framework combined with a historical methodology to set the scene for understanding the place of interest groups in southern state politics. We bring the story of the development of southern interest groups up to the early 1970s and explain our methodology. The twelve state chapters—covering the eleven states of the old Confederacy plus Kentucky—are organized into two sections, the Peripheral South and the Deep South. With the addition of Kentucky to the Peripheral South, this is the division used by Earl and Merle Black in their 1987 ground breaking work, Politics and Society in the South. To provide some background for understanding the specifics of interest group activity in each state, we begin each chapter with a brief, pertinent overview of the state and its politics. In the concluding chapter we bring the story of southern interest groups up to the present day, using the conceptual framework set out in Chapter 1 and drawing on the information in the state chapters to provide a comparative analysis of the current role, operating techniques, and power of southern state interest groups. We also compare recent developments in southern interest group politics with those in other regions.

To steal a line from countless prefaces, this book could not have been written without the help of many people and organizations. Many there are, but in this case, they are not too numerous to mention. At the top of the list are our eighteen contributing authors. In particular we appreciate their willingness to bear the cost of their own research, and to stick with us when things were not working out quite the way we had planned. The work of the fifty-eight contributors to our project from the other three regions made possible the comparisons with the rest of the country that we make in this book. Earl Black, Robert P. Steed, and Charles G. Bell read the manuscript and made several useful suggestions. We benefited greatly from their efforts. We thank Malcolm MacDonald, director of the University of Alabama Press, for his support and enthusiasm for our project. Our editors, Pamela Ferdinand, Ellen Stein, and their colleagues were of immense help. Sue Ogden and Debbie Frye helped type the manuscript and aided us in mastering the intricacies of computer software. The University of Utah and the University of Alaska Southeast provided us with some basic resources—not least of which was regular employment. And finally, our families were very understanding. Most importantly, they sensed those times, those countless hours, when we just had to be left alone to think, research, and write.

A few comments about how we shared the work in putting together this book: at times each of us felt that he was doing the bulk of the work. The truth of the matter is, however, that in the final tally we each did 51 percent. That is not to say that we shared equally in each of the myriad tasks involved in producing an edited book; like all good partnerships, ours is based on the fact that we complement each other. But how successful our partnership has been in this instance is a question that we will leave for others to judge.

Ronald J. Hrebenar

Salt Lake City, Utah

Clive S. Thomas

Juneau, Alaska

1

UNDERSTANDING INTEREST GROUP ACTIVITY IN SOUTHERN STATE POLITICS

Clive S. Thomas

For much of this century, down to the 1960s, Texas politics was dominated by four powerful interests—oil, chemicals, railroads, and the Texas Manufacturers Association. The wheeler-dealer lobbyists who represented these Big Four interests used their tremendous influence to achieve purposes far beyond their clients’ narrow policy goals. They advocated the establishment’s number one priority—a good business climate, which in those days meant weak unions, low taxes and minimum regulation.¹ In other words, more than any other forces or facets of Texas life, the Big Four interests could largely determine what state government did or, more importantly, what it did not do.

Such a situation, with interest groups exerting a stranglehold on state politics, was common in many states during this period. But, largely because of the special circumstances of southern political life, interest groups played a crucial and in most cases a dominant role in all southern states with the possible exception of Virginia, although even in Virginia they were extremely influential. And the power of southern interest groups lives on today. In fact, in some respects their political significance is greater than ever. Interest groups have been such an important and dominant feature of southern politics for so long that studying their development and contemporary activities provides perspective both comprehensive and unique on past and present southern political life.

No life-style—particularly no political life-style—of any region of the United States has been the subject of more negative stereotypes than that of the American South. The South has been seen as racist and staunchly white supremacist; as backward, rural, poverty-stricken, and economically stagnant; as rife with demagogs and corrupt politicians; and as politically elitist and conservative to the extreme. Yet, and perhaps mainly because of these long-standing stereotypes, in the last thirty years the South has been the subject of a largely positive press. This is because the region has gone through some major, if often painful, changes that have brought its social, economic, and political system more in line with the rest of the nation.

Change—often fundamental change—has affected almost every aspect of southern life and culture. As one commentator put it, the South has changed so much in the past decade or two that change itself has become Dixie’s most identifiable characteristic.² Volumes of writing, both popular and academic, have documented, traced, analyzed, and speculated about these changes. As integral and resilient features of southern life, interest groups have been both affected by this change and instrumental in helping bring it about.

Two words closely associated with change are transition and growth. Change inevitably produces a transition, whether to a less or more favorable state of affairs. By the standards of democratic theory, recent changes in interest group activity in the South have set in motion a largely positive transition. In Texas, for example, several groups not previously represented have entered the political fray in Austin, which in turn has challenged the power of the Big Four. Change does not necessarily produce growth; it might produce decline or contraction. In the recent history of southern interest group politics, however, change has very much been linked with growth. Once again, Texas is fairly typical. Here there has not only been a growth in the number of groups in Austin, but also in the strata of the population represented by interest groups, as well as a growth in the professionalism of lobbyists and group leaders. Explaining exactly what the nature of this change, transition, and growth has been in recent developments in southern interest group politics is our primary objective in this book.

To achieve this we combine an in-depth analysis of individual states with comparative analysis of the region as a whole. This involves four distinct but interrelated lines of inquiry. First, we provide an overview of the types of groups operating in each state and the tactics they are now using to achieve their goals. For several states this constitutes the first comprehensive treatment of interest groups past or present. Second, we assess changes in interest group politics in the South as a whole, especially in the role that groups play in the public policy-making process. Third, we place the South in context by comparing its past and present trends with those in other regions. Finally, by combining the findings from these three lines of inquiry we hope to enhance general theories of interest group activity in the states.

Most importantly, this first chapter sets out an analytical framework for understanding the changes, transition, and growth in southern interest group politics. We will review the existing state of knowledge on southern groups; briefly trace the development of groups in the South up until the 1970s, and the factors that have affected change; explain some key definitions and our methodology; and identify some recent changes in other regions as a means of assessing the developments identified by the authors of chapters on the individual states. However, neither in this chapter nor in this book do we claim to provide more than a cursory treatment of southern politics. We simply highlight those topics and themes that are essential for an understanding of southern interest group politics.

The South Defined

The South has long been considered one of the most distinctive of American regions, encompassing the eleven states of the Old Confederacy. This was the definition used by V. O. Key, Jr., in his 1949 classic, Southern Politics in State and Nation,³ and most subsequent academic treatments of southern politics have followed suit.⁴ There are, indeed, good arguments based on cultural, social, economic, and political factors for defining the South in this way. A case can be made, however, that recent changes have weakened the cohesiveness of this regional definition. Southern Florida, northern Virginia, and west Texas can justifiably be no longer considered as part of the South, if they ever were. On the other hand, parts of Maryland and West Virginia, the southern parts of Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois, eastern Oklahoma and most of Kentucky could easily be considered southern.

Furthermore, even within the traditional eleven-state region some distinct subregional patterns have long been identified, as well as intrastate regionalism. Distinctions have been made, for example, between the Upper South—North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee—and the Deep South—Arkansas (sometimes considered an Upper South state), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. Exactly which category Texas fits, if either, has never been clear. Another, and more analytically sound, division is between the Deep South and the Peripheral South: Five states (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana) are classed in the first, and the remaining six in the latter category.⁵ As to intrastate divisions, within several southern states the division between the lowlands and the uplands dates back to colonial or territorial days.

Consequently, while the South is less amorphous a region than the West or the Midwest, scholars disagree over its extent. Faced with these problems, we settled on a definition of the South that includes the eleven states of the Old Confederacy plus Kentucky. Listed alphabetically these are:

Alabama

Arkansas

Florida

Georgia

Kentucky

Louisiana

Mississippi

North Carolina

South Carolina

Tennessee

Texas

Virginia

Our rationale for embracing these twelve within our definition is based on a combination of their distinctiveness and convenience of analysis. As most of the existing comparative data on southern politics use Key’s definition, it was most logical to include these states for comparisons with our data. Kentucky was added because it is predominantly more southern than midwestern or northeastern in terms of its social, economic, and political variables. Maryland, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Missouri were excluded because they are not predominantly southern in these respects. In organizing the sequence of discussing these twelve states, we took the division of Peripheral and Deep South as being the one that best represents recent political developments in the region. However, as we will see throughout this book, the distinction between southern states in regards to their contemporary interest group systems is much less clear than in other areas of southern politics.

Southern Interest Groups: Research and Definitions

Despite the extensive literature on southern politics, very little material exists on southern interest groups. For very good reason, research on southern politics has followed the mold cast by Key over forty years ago. The bulk of research has focused on patterns of factionalism within the Democratic party, the rise of the Republicans, increased political participation by blacks, the effects of economic growth and changing demographics, and the South’s role in national politics. Yet the South is not alone in its dearth of research on state interest groups; the bulk of research on interest groups in the United States has focused on group activity at the national level.

As to southern interest group politics specifically, until now no comprehensive comparative analysis has been produced. Seven types of studies have, however, treated—or more often touched on—some aspects of interest group activity in the South. First, at the most general level and written for a popular readership, there are books that have dealt with southern politics, and to some extent southern interest groups, as part of a general treatment of the life of the states. These include John Gunther’s Inside USA and the series of books on the regions of the country by Neal R. Peirce.⁶ Despite their shortcomings, in the absence of comprehensive and comparative academic information scholars have often turned to these books to piece together an understanding of southern interest groups. In fact, Sarah McCally Morehouse used Peirce’s books to put together the first list of the most effective groups in the fifty states.⁷

The second category of literature on southern interest groups comprises academic works, books treating the government and politics of individual southern states, and books that include southern states as examples or case studies. While at some time all twelve states are written of in some text, the treatment of interest groups varies widely. Some researchers devote a separate chapter to interest groups, others do not.⁸ These authors also display a wide variety of approaches, from the purely anecdotal to the highly conceptual and quantitative. They also vary in scope and depth of treatment. Most such studies are now outdated. And while many chapters in books that include southern states as examples or case studies are well written, length limitations preclude their authors’ paying more than cursory attention to interest groups.⁹

Third, beginning with Key, scholars have to some extent treated interest groups in general texts on southern politics. Yet, as we mentioned above, these treatments have usually been only incidental. No book, for example, has analyzed the role that groups have played over the years in southern states’ political systems.

Fourth, in more recent years books have been published on specific aspects of southern politics, whose authors have focused on or included treatments of particular interest groups in the South. Most notable is the series of books edited by Robert P. Steed, Tod A. Baker, and Laurence W. Moreland.¹⁰

A fifth category includes a small body of literature that focuses on public policy in which researchers have taken a case-study approach to investigating the impact of individual groups. For example, several years ago Harmon Zeigler studied the impact of the Florida Milk Commission (which was controlled by the dairy interests) on milk prices in that state. More recently Joseph Stewart and James Sheffield studied the use of the courts by black interest groups in Mississippi.¹¹

In a sixth category of literature scholars have taken what might be termed a microapproach to the study of group theory, looking at either some specific aspect of the internal organization and operation of groups or at how they affect some specific part of the political process, such as the legislature. Sometimes these researchers have been concerned solely with specific states—for example, an early 1980s study of Arkansas lobbyists by Charles Dunn and Donald Whistler.¹² Most often, however, those using this approach have taken one or more southern states as part of a larger study. Zeigler and Michael Baer, for example, used North Carolina as one of the four states in their study of lobbying in state legislatures; and Charles Bell, Keith Hamm, and Charles Wiggins used Texas in their recent three-state study of group impact on certain areas of public policy.¹³

These six categories are a useful starting point in a study of southern interest groups, particularly group activity in individual states, and we will make numerous references to them throughout this book. Yet, because of their great variation in methodology and scope and depth of analysis, they are of very limited value for purposes of comparative analysis (and often for individual state studies). There is, however, a seventh category of literature, comparative in focus and including the southern states as part of nationwide studies of state interest group activity. Authors within this category have taken what we might term a macroapproach, attempting to understand interest groups in the context of the individual state and particularly in relation to that state’s political and governmental systems. The most notable work here has been conducted by Belle Zeller, Harmon Zeigler, and Hendrik van Dalen, and by Sarah McCally Morehouse.¹⁴

In none of these studies, however, have scholars conducted systematic research on all the southern states. Their attempts at comprehensive analysis of both the South and other regions are based upon original data from only a few states and draw on other information (such as that referred to above) that varies in its methodology from the impressionistic to the highly quantitative, a divergence that is not ideal for comparative analysis. The theories and propositions developed from these studies were thus arrived at by extrapolation, or by reliance on secondary sources, and sometimes, in the absence of data, through speculation. Yet these comments should not be interpreted as understating the significant contribution of these studies. Each was a major source for evaluating interest groups at the subnational level—including the South—at a time when little other data existed. Zeller was the first to categorize states into strong, moderate, or weak interest group systems. Zeigler, and Zeigler and van Dalen, developed several theories and propositions about how a state’s economic, social, and political system influences the composition, operation, and power of the state’s interest group system. Most notably they developed a four-category classification of group power within strong interest group states; and advanced knowledge on the relationship between party strength and group power. More recently Morehouse built on this work. In particular, she expanded on the relationship of parties and groups, and refined the threefold classification system (strong, moderate, or weak) of interest group power vis-à-vis a state’s political system. And, as mentioned above, she developed the first listing of the most significant groups in all fifty states. All this has acted as a benchmark for scholars conducting subsequent research. It certainly provided our study with an important point of departure.

One of the problems that reduces the usefulness of existing studies of southern interest groups for purposes of comparative analysis, be this within a state over time or between states past or present, is the variation in definition of key terms. Five of the most important of these terms are interest group, interest, lobby, lobbyist, and group power. It is not surprising that scholars have used various definitions of these terms, whether explicitly or not, as disputes over their meaning have plagued the academic study of interest groups for years. Therefore, for the purposes of methodological and analytical consistency we developed definitions of these terms for use by our contributors in all fifty states. Here we will define the first four, leaving group power for later in this chapter when we explain our methodology in more detail.

The terms interest group, interest, and lobby are used here to denote three levels of political group classification that are useful for analyzing interest group activity. At the most specific level is the interest group itself. Just a cursory reading of the literature reveals that over the years researchers have used a variety of operational definitions of this term. Most commonly they have used the legal or regulatory definition, making their focus of study those groups required to register under federal and state laws, and excluding those not required to do so. In certain limited cases such a definition may be adequate; but for most research on state interest groups and particularly that with a comparative focus or component, it has some serious shortcomings.

The major problem with this legal or regulatory definition is that the fifty states vary considerably in what groups and organizations they require to register as lobbying entities. Some states, such as Oregon, have relatively broad rules requiring even state agencies to register. Others, such as Georgia, have very narrow regulations.¹⁵ Common sense would lead us to surmise, and research on Georgia demonstrates, that most of the types of groups that appear on Oregon’s registration lists but are not required to register in Georgia are, in fact, also very active in Georgia’s public policy-making process. Ignoring these unregistered, or hidden, groups and lobbies, and especially state governmental agencies, provides a very distorted understanding of the role and impact of interest groups in Georgia’s public policy-making process. For these reasons, using group registration lists as the sole basis for comparative state interest group research is largely unsatisfactory. This is particularly true in the South where lobby registration laws tend, like Georgia’s, to be narrow and laxly enforced.

In an attempt to overcome these problems and embrace these unregistered lobbying forces, we defined an interest group in our fifty-state study as any association of individuals or organizations, whether formally organized or not, that attempts to influence public policy. The Alabama League of Municipalities is an example of a specific interest group, as is the Tennessee Farm Bureau. This is a variation of David Truman’s definition, probably the most widely used definition of interest group. However, our definition is shorter and more concrete; embraces, by implication, the various concepts that Truman included; and at the same time eliminates some of the shortcomings of his definition.¹⁶ Obviously, as do all definitions of interest group, ours has its problems. It is very broad and, as some of the contributors to our Hrebenar-Thomas study discovered, creates some problems in securing data. However, the research results from this project demonstrate that this definition produces a view of interest group activity in the states, including many aspects previously unnoticed or only superficially treated, that is much more comprehensive and balanced than that of many previous studies. This has proved to be especially the case with the South.

In contrast to an interest group, lobby has a much broader connotation. In our study we use it as a collective term, defined as two or more individuals, groups, or organizations concerned with the same general area of public policy, but that may or may not be in agreement on specific issues. One example will suffice. The local government lobby in most states, including the South, is composed of state municipal leagues or associations of cities and counties (e.g., the Alabama League of Municipalities); public employee groups such as county and city workers (clerks, police, firemen, and teachers); associations of elected officials such as mayors, judges, and school board members; state agencies concerned with local government; and individual towns, cities, and districts that use or hire their own lobbyists. All of these have a general interest in promoting legislation and funding to enhance the quality of local government. However, on specific issues members of this lobby may be on opposite sides. For instance, individual cities and districts often find themselves in conflict with their state municipal league or other associations to which they belong over such issues as changing local governmental powers, taxation policy, and particularly the allocation of funds for capital projects.

The term interest has a broader connotation than interest group but is more specific than a lobby. We can refer again to local government groups as an example. Individual cities and towns such as Louisville, Kentucky, and Miami, Florida, often lobby directly and thus can be considered as specific interest groups. These, as we noted above, are also members of the local government lobby in their state. But they can also be considered as part of the interest category of cities and towns or local governmental jurisdictions. This might embrace several specific groups such as state municipal leagues and associations of counties. Exactly where an interest ends and a lobby begins is not always clear. But it is often a useful distinction to make, for two reasons. Public officials often refer to similar types of interest groups that often act in concert as an interest; and the term provides a useful means for categorizing similar types of groups for purposes relating to such activities as analyses of the types of groups operating in state capitals, group tactics, and group power.

Finally, we define a lobbyist as a person designated by an interest group to represent it to government for the purpose of influencing public policy in that group’s favor. From our definition of interest group we know that the interest represented by the lobbyist need not necessarily be a formal organization such as the Tennessee Farm Bureau or the Virginia Bankers Association. It includes informal and ad hoc groups such as a group of union members disaffected from their leaders or an informal association of businesspeople. Or it could be an individual representing himself or herself or pursuing some heartfelt cause. Neither do we confine the term lobbyist to those representing groups required to register under state law, for the reasons we mentioned earlier.¹⁷

It is important to understand, however, that to lump all lobbyists together as lobbyists clouds an understanding of their role and of various aspects of interest group activity, just as an understanding of the organization and operation of the legal profession would be clouded by referring to all its members as attorneys. Lobbyists, like attorneys, musicians, baseball players, and teachers, can be divided into various categories or types. There are five major categories of lobbyists:

• Contract lobbyists: those hired on contract for a fee specifically to lobby; they may represent more than one client

• In-house lobbyists: employees of an organization, association, or business who as all or part of their job act as lobbyists; these represent only one client—their employer

• Government lobbyists, or legislative liaisons: employees of state, local, and federal agencies who as part or all of their job represent their agency to the legislative and executive branches of state government; these also represent only one interest

• Citizen or volunteer lobbyists: persons who, usually on an ad hoc and unpaid basis, represent citizens’ and community organizations or informal groups; they rarely represent more than one interest at a time

• Private individual, hobbyist, or self-styled lobbyists: those acting on their own behalf; since the only organization they officially represent is themselves, they are for all practical purposes their own interest group.

While these five categories of lobbyists have the identical goal of influencing public policy, their background and experience, the resources they have behind them, and the organizations they represent mean that they are perceived differently by those they seek to influence, and thus they have to gear their methods of operation accordingly.

A Framework for Understanding Interest Group Activity in the States

As a basis on which to build an understanding of interest group activity in the states, including the southern states, it is useful to consider the basic factors that influence that activity—that is to say, what determines the types of groups that are active; the methods they use in pursuing their goals; and the role that groups play within state political systems and, in particular, the power that they exert within those systems. Existing research in this area is rather sketchy. Scholars agree, however, that the answers to these basic questions about